The only side I am picking is humanity.

Everything feels big right now. Bigger than us. Darker and more complex than we quite know how to process. There is always something new to react to, something new to condemn, something new to defend. Every week we are handed another storyline and expected to take a position immediately, loudly, publicly.

And yes, I go down rabbit holes. I read and watch things most people would scroll past, pretty dark topics too. I listen to voices I don't necessarily agree with. I follow threads that make my stomach tighten. Not because I enjoy it. Because I care and I feel I need to. Because not looking feels worse than looking. Because I feel light needs to be shone over the dark. I believe that different people have different 'tasks' in this time on earth.

But I have had to admit something. There is a difference between observing what is happening and being dragged into it. Caring does not require me to be consumed. Awareness does not require me to become reactive.

It is very easy right now to get pushed into picking sides. To feel morally obligated to join every battle that flashes across a screen. To believe that if you are not visibly fighting, you are complicit. Meanwhile we are exhausted. Tired of the noise. Tired of the finger-pointing. Tired of being emotionally recruited into things that live far outside our direct sphere of influence. Tired of all the information. And be honest: we receive way too little information to be able to really 'in the know'.

These games of divide and conquer are being played for maybe thousands of years already, or even longer than that. Who knows? Maybe it goes even further, intergalactical. We don't know the whole story. History has always been rewritten time and again, just like 'they' wanted to.

Are we even meant to know what happens around the whole world all of the time? Or is it more healthy, logic, natural and human to keep your focus on your own surroundings, your own family? The things you have direct influence on? Where you are needed the most. I don't have the correct answer.

Divide and conquer is not new. It just runs faster now. And while we argue about the headline of the week, something deeper hums underneath it all. Sometimes the things feel so big and so dark that we almost circle around them collectively. We talk about the edges. We debate the visible players. But the unease remains. I refuse to pretend nothing is happening. But I also refuse to let myself be swallowed.

The only side I am picking is humanity. Something we can ALL do without knowing all the ins and outs of everything.

Not left. Not right. Or what that is supposed to mean nowadays. Not whatever ideological tribe demands loyalty this month.

Nature. Humanity.

Humanity is not an abstract concept. It is people. Women, men. CHILDREN. It is small. It is local. It is how I speak to my children. It is whether I pass on my fear or metabolise it. It is whether I stay steady in my own nervous system when the world feels unstable. At the same time, humanity is the biggest player in the field. The 99%.

We are living inside enormous abstract systems. (Digital) money. Surveillance. Invisible power structures. Industry. Internet and media. Governments and taxes: locally, nationally, globally. Rigid educational systems. Institutions and narratives that shape perception in ways we barely notice (although it is becoming more and more loud and obvious). We were born into these systems; we did not consciously choose them. It is easy to start believing that they are more real than our own lives.

They are not.

My body is real. My home is real. My children are real. The way I earn money and spend it is real. Nature is real. The way I choose to respond when fear is sold to me is real.

No one is coming to fix this for us. No secret saviour, no perfect leader, no dramatic unveiling that resets everything overnight. And strangely, that does not depress me. It steadies me. Because it means I stop waiting for help. I stop outsourcing my authority. I stop behaving as if I am a tiny pawn in a game that someone else controls entirely.

I can see the game without playing every round.

Maybe the real crossroads we are standing at is not primarily political or technological, but existential. One path leads further into abstraction, into endless digital layers, into living in reaction to narratives about narratives. The other path is less glamorous. It looks like autonomy. Responsibility. Health. Love. Common sense. Adulthood. The organic way, as I like to see it.

Not spiritual bypassing. Not pretending darkness does not exist. Not chasing transcendence. Integration. The willingness to be fully human in a time that constantly tries to pull us out of ourselves.

We talk a lot about awakening, about consciousness, about enlightenment. But perhaps what we actually need is maturity. The capacity to hold complexity without collapsing into cynicism or hysteria. The strength to acknowledge corruption when you see it. Yes, also in your own country. The humility to realise that the sacred is not somewhere else. It is here, in the ordinary, in the choices we make every day.

I do not want to burn the world down. I want my children to grow up inside it. As free beings.

I want planet earth to be healthy, and all of its inhabitants to thrive.

I want to feel light again, not because I am ignorant of what is happening, but because I am not letting it colonise my inner world. I want to play. To build. To raise children who can think and feel for themselves instead of merely react. I want to participate in this human experience consciously, not as a permanently outraged spectator.

Maybe you feel it too. That gnawing sense that you do not quite fit the system, and yet you still live in it. You pay bills, taxes. You participate. You try to do right by your family. There is a tension there. You want to live freely, but you are not disappearing into the woods. You are here, in society, in the mess.

Maybe being human was never about escaping the mess. Maybe it is about inhabiting it consciously. As sovereign beings with the ability to love and care deeply. Without being dragged into a game that isn't yours. Wars that aren't yours.

Choosing love over fear. Love for each other, love for the earth and all its inhabitants.

The only side I am picking is humanity. Not because it is neutral, but because it is foundational. If we cannot stay human in the middle of all of this, nothing else we fight for will matter. That is the ground I am standing on.

Love, Annemarijn